Category After Apollo?

Noticeable by his absence as NASA tried to garner support for the space shuttle was Wernher von Braun, perhaps NASA’s most charismatic spokes­person. Von Braun had moved to NASA headquarters early in 1970 to direct NASA’s planning efforts, and thus logically he should have been one of the senior NASA officials involved in the attempt to gain White House support for the shuttle. But Fletcher and Low had discovered that “von Braun is not a supporter of the Shuttle, and in fact may be an opponent.” According to Low, von Braun’s skepticism was based on his conclusion that “the Shuttle will cost much more than our current estimates of Mark I/Mark II, and that NASA cannot afford to proceed with the development. To use his words, if we were given a Shuttle for a Christmas present, we would certainly use it, but, according to him, we cannot afford the cost of development.”31

Von Braun had come to Washington with high hopes that, working together with the visionary Tom Paine, he might be able to convince the president and Congress to proceed toward a goal of eventual human missions to Mars, which had been his lifelong aspiration. President Nixon’s March 1970 space statement had dampened that hope, and von Braun quickly found that in his position as head of planning for NASA, he was expected to present options for the agency’s leaders to choose among, not advocate a particular course of action. When Paine announced in July 1970 that he was leaving NASA, von Braun was “just devastated.” His relationship with George Low during Low’s time as acting administrator was cordial but professional; “the one-on-one meetings with the administrator [Paine] ended and appointments with the acting administrator [Low] to discuss our programs became more difficult to set up as time went by.” When Fletcher became NASA administrator, “it tem­porarily improved the climate for von Braun.” Fletcher “admired” von Braun, and told him so. But given that Dale Myers and his team were leading shuttle studies, Fletcher “no more needed a ‘chief architect’ and planner than did George Low.” Von Braun was one of those arguing in mid-1971 that NASA should give up on advocating a two-stage, fully reusable shuttle. According to von Braun’s biographer, “what he could not dodge was his growing isolation at headquarters, a product of the marginalization of his planning office and his unpopular stance on space shuttle funding and design.” By May 1972, von Braun decided to leave NASA for a job in industry; at his farewell party, he told a close associate, “George Low had thanked him profusely, in the name of all NASA, for fighting for a ‘smaller and cheaper’ shuttle.” Low told von Braun: “We were not at all pleased by your warning words, but finally

accepted your advice__ If you had not raised the red flag at that time, I’m

certain the entire shuttle would be dead by now.” Von Braun described that conversation as his “happiest moment during my time at headquarters.”32 But in the heated debate over shuttle approval in the fall of 1971, Wernher von Braun was nowhere to be seen.

One issue that had been in the background through much of 1971 had been the possibility that President Nixon would decide to broaden NASA’s man­date to include large-scale efforts to apply technology to the solution of vari­ous social problems outside of the aeronautics and space arena. Spearheading the effort to develop such “new technology opportunities” in the White House had been William Magruder, former head of the supersonic transport program. By November, Magruder had come up with a proposal to establish within the Executive Office of the President a new unit with some 300 staff members (many more than staff working for OMB or OST) as an interim step to coordinate planning a major technology initiatives effort, with the possibility that after sufficient planning was completed NASA might be asked to take on some or all of the new activities.

However, there were emerging problems with the Magruder effort. When Low in late November asked Magruder when the NASA people Magruder had requested to help staff the new office should report for duty, “it became quite apparent that he did not yet have clearance to move out with this so-called interim organization.” At about the same time, Rice told Low that “there was a great deal of controversy within the White House as to whether or not Magruder ought to establish this organization.” Rice thought that “nothing much will happen as a result of the New Technological Initiatives” and that “there was no sense in going ahead with the massive Magruder exercise.” Rice was correct; during December both OMB and OST raised strong objections to the Magruder plan, and it was stillborn, with only a few modest efforts in stimulating technological innovation eventually approved. Low thought that “a strong NASA association” with the Magruder effort “would have done us a great deal of harm.”25

The collapse of the Magruder exercise was not explicitly linked to increas­ing the chances of NASA’s getting approval for a full capability shuttle and its other post-Apollo ambitions. The Domestic Council’s Ed Harper said “I was at all the relevant meetings and the two programs [New Technology Opportunities and the space shuttle] were never discussed in terms of a trade-off.” Weinberger suggested that “there was no connection between the two. . . The shuttle was already there on a separate track.” When asked whether the collapse of the Magruder effort got linked to the shuttle deci­sion at the president’s level, Ehrlichman replied “I don’t think so.”26

In his December 29 letter to Cap Weinberger recommending how to proceed with respect to the space shuttle, and again in its January 3 letter responding to OMB questions, James Fletcher had asked for a "Administrator’s contingency" of 20 percent to guard against unex­pected costs during shuttle development, saying "approval of a $5 bil­lion program would thus constitute a commitment by NASA to make every effort to produce the desired system for under $5 billion, but in no case more than $6 billion." That funding reserve apparently was not discussed at the January 3 meeting at which Shultz gave quick approval to the full capability shuttle. Fletcher intended to bring up the issue with the president when he and Low met with Nixon on January 5, but forgot to do so. He called Bill Anders the next day, ask­ing Anders to intercede with the White House to make sure that the budget reserve was part of NASA’s understanding with OMB. When Anders called John Ehrlichman, he was told to relay the message to Fletcher that NASA would have to "eat" any cost overruns. In a February 16 letter from Shultz to Fletcher in which Shultz "recapitu­lated our understanding of the decisions that have been made to date on the space shuttle," there was no mention of a funding reserve; indeed Shultz told Fletcher that we "fully expect NASA to develop a shuttle system within the $5.5 billion of research and development costs, should we subsequently agree on the choice of pressure-fed boosters, or within an appropriately smaller amount should the choice be solid rocket motors."5

In the same letter, Shultz told NASA that it was "our specific under­standing that NASA’s peak annual spending during the period of development of the shuttle will not exceed $3.2 billion of outlays in the dollars of the FY 1973 budget." NASA up to that point had been argu­ing that the offer that NASA had made to develop the shuttle within the framework of a constant overall NASA budget, adjusted for infla­tion, was based on FY1971 dollars and on a FY 1973 new obligational authority level of $3.379 billion, rather than the $3.2 billion outlays level. The question of the budget baseline also had not been explicitly discussed at the January 3 approval meeting. When Fletcher and Low realized that their understanding was at variance with OMB’s intent, a difference that could lead to more than a billion dollar shortfall in the funds available for shuttle development, they tried for the next month to convince OMB to agree to a constant NASA budget based on the $3.379 billion level for FY 1973 and shuttle cost estimates based on FY1971 dollars. They did not succeed. Indeed, in fall 1972, Weinberger, by then the director of OMB, refused to honor the constant budget agreement even at the $3.2 billion level, leading James Fletcher to conclude that "a commitment from OMB is worthless."6

These two differences of understanding between NASA and OMB with respect to the funding available for shuttle development meant that the program had to be managed under very tight financial con­straints. When the almost inevitable technical problems arose, there was no margin in the shuttle budget to deal with them; as a result, there were cost overruns and schedule delays that in the late 1970s almost led to President Jimmy Carter canceling the shuttle program.

The policy mistake in the decision to develop the full capability space shuttle had deep roots in the history of the space shuttle program. The 2003 report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded that “the great­est compromise NASA made was not so much with any particular element of the technical design, but rather with the premise of the vehicle itself. NASA promised it could develop a Shuttle that would be launched almost on demand and would fly many missions each year.” The report added “the increased complexity of a Shuttle designed to be all things to all people cre­ated inherently greater risks than if more realistic technical goals had been set from the start. Designing a reusable spacecraft that is cost-effective is a daunting engineering challenge; doing so on a tightly constrained budget is even more difficult.”29 That was the situation in which NASA found itself in 1970 and 1971, but NASA’s leaders persisted in their advocacy of the full capability shuttle, even as some of them, particularly George Low, ques­tioned the wisdom of that advocacy.

There were actually two policy mistakes associated with the shuttle deci­sion. The first and more fundamental mistake was the White House accept­ing as the basis for its shuttle decision NASA’s claim that it could successfully go directly from the Apollo progra^m, characterized by brute force launcher technology and crew-carrying capsules parachuting to an ocean landing, to developing a highly capable vehicle in terms of payload capacity, in-orbit operation, and maneuvering during entry, incorporating a^dvanced tech­nology in many of its systems, with a high degree of reusability, and able to land on a runway and quickly be readied for another Sunch, all at res­tively modest cost compared to the alternatives. The bullish vision of people such as Tom Paine and George Mueller pushed NASA to focus on an ambi­tious shuttle design incorporating advanced technology and capable of “air­line type” operations. There was a significant degree of technological hubris in NASA’s view of what would be achievable. After all, NASA engineers and managers had just succeeded in landing American astronauts on the Moon and were convinced that they could overcome the next set of technological challenges.

NASA and its contractors thus focused their attention during 1970 and the first half of 1971 on finding the best design meeting NASA and national security community requirements and employing cutting edge technology in areas such as propulsion, thermal protection, and onboard electronic sys­tems. After May 1971 they had to carry out their design studies within an OMB-imposed budget ceiling in terms of both peak annual funding and the overall cost of the shuttle program. Although NASA recognized by mid-1971 that a two-stage fully reusable shuttle design was not feasible either financially or technologically, there was little emphasis on investigat­ing less ambitious, less expensive, alternatives to an advanced technology shuttle orbiter with a variety of means for boosting it into space. There was essentially no attention given at the engineering level to concepts such as the glider favored by the Flax committee or the smaller shuttle proposed by OMB, or even to the Mark I, less technologically ambitious, shuttle pro­posed by NASA Headquarters.

In addition to designing a shuttle that could be developed within a constrained budget, NASA engineers were forced into demonstrating the shuttle’s overall cost-effectiveness. In 1970, the Bureau of the Budget and then its successor OMB had insisted on proof that the shuttle development and operation would cost less than using expendable vehicles to launch U. S. space missions. NASA concluded that it had to satisfy that unprec­edented OMB requirement. Demonstrating the shuttle’s cost-effectiveness became perceived as a political necessity, and likely led to NASA’s lead­ers and engineers deluding themselves about the costs of operating the shuttle on a frequent basis in order to make the economic case come out positively.

The design ultimately recommended was likely the best engineering solu­tion to the demanding requirements NASA’s technical staff was asked to meet. But that design created a first-generation experimental vehicle, not a shuttle capable of delivering the cost savings and routine operational benefits that NASA was promising. Basing the White House decision to approve the NASA shuttle on other factors while implicitly accepting NASA’s optimistic claims with respect to the shuttle’s operation was a policy mistake with long – lasting consequences.

When NASA in its September 30, 1970, budget proposal to the Office of Management and Budget OMB) characterized the space shuttle as “cost- effective,” it was responding to pressure from the budget office to demon­strate that the combination of the costs of developing and operating the reusable shuttle would, over the period of shuttle use, produce a cost savings over the use of existing or new expendable launch vehicles to launch the same missions. This requirement was unprecedented; in the 12 years since NASA had begun operations, it had never been required to show that one of its programs could be justified in economic terms. The NASA leadership, once it had decided to defer the space station and to justify the shuttle as a general – purpose launch system, concluded that it had no alternative but to accede to the cost-effectiveness requirement. NASA quickly recognized that meeting this requirement would require the shuttle being used to launch essentially all U. S. payloads. In particular, military and intelligence satellites launched by the national security community comprised almost half of the U. S. demand for space launches, and there was no way that the shuttle could be cost effec­tive unless that community abandoned its own launch vehicles and commit­ted to use the shuttle once its feasibility had been demonstrated.

This put the national security community in a strong bargaining position. Knowing that NASA needed its commitment to use the shuttle, the com­munity could both set out a demanding set of performance requirements for the shuttle to meet and refuse to share in the cost of shuttle development, claiming it already had perfectly adequate launch capability. This was the path that was followed from early 1969 to the final approval of the shuttle. While NASA if it had not had to respond to national security requirements might well have chosen another shuttle design, its leaders decided that they had no choice but to meet those requirements. Throughout the shuttle study process, and particularly in the critical year of 1971, it was the ability of the shuttle to launch all or almost all national security as well as NASA payloads that defined the shuttle design NASA would advocate.

National security requirements defined three shuttle performance char­acteristics:

1. Payload bay dimensions: The shuttle would carry its cargo in a “payload bay.” The width and length of the payload bay would determine the size of the cargo that could be carried.

2. Payload weight: The lifting power of the shuttle was usually expressed in how many pounds of payload it could launch to various orbits. The weight of payloads that the shuttle could take to various orbits was in turn linked to how many future missions could be launched by the shuttle. The heavi­est payloads anticipated for the shuttle were national security missions.

3. Cross range: This was the ability of the shuttle to maneuver sideways from a “straight ahead” path as it returned to Earth. There were a variety of speculative national security missions for the shuttle that required cross range of over 1,100 nautical miles (nm).

This chapter gives only minimal attention to the detailed technical issues involved in defining a space shuttle design that would meet these national security requirements; those issues have been treated in several other studies.1

George Low, at that time still NASA acting administrator, reluctantly approved Myers’s January decision to orient the Phase B studies to a full capability fully reusable shuttle, although he “had hoped that Myers would be able to come up with a phased program, where we would first develop the orbiter to be launched on a [expendable] Saturn IC stage”; a reusable booster stage would be developed several years later. Such an approach would mean giving up, at least for the first few years of shuttle operation, the goal of full reusability and the accompanying very low operating costs that had been at the core of the shuttle’s attractiveness for potential users.

Low’s thoughts about phasing the shuttle development program dated back several months. As he had argued with OMB in the fall of 1970 for full funding for the shuttle in the FY1972 budget, Low recognized that if future NASA budgets remained at the same low level as what was being proposed for FY1972, there was no way to fund the development of a two-stage, fully reusable space shuttle without taking up an unacceptable share of the overall NASA budget. On the day after Thanksgiving 1970, Low had called to his home Willis Shapley, Dale Myers, and Charles Donlan. Low noted that “we held the meeting because of our collective concern that the shuttle program, as now constituted (two-stage fully reusable vehicle), would cost more than we could afford on an annual basis in the middle of the 70’s.” He added

A phased program, wherein we would first procure only the orbiter and launch it on a modified [Saturn] S-1C stage and only subsequently build a booster, would make more sense from the point of view of annual funding. It might also make more sense technically because we would face only one major prob­lem at a time. At the same time, we could also adopt a Block I/Block II approach, wherein many of the “nice to have” features would be reserved for Block II and would not be incorporated into Block I. In other words, the Block I vehicle would have the potential for cross-range, but only Block II would fly with cross-range.28

These ideas did not get translated into NASA policy for some months; in the interim, studies of the shuttle went forward based on Dale Myers’s January 1971 requirements.

As he thought through the path that NASA should follow, Low in August had outlined for his senior colleagues his ideas on “the desired Space Transportation System for the 1980’s.” He rejected both developing a full­sized, two-stage reusable shuttle and pursuing an approach using a reusable “ballistic” spacecraft, a capsule without wings, launched on an expendable booster and parachuted back to Earth. This approach was based on modify­ing the two-person Gemini spacecraft used in the mid-1960s to carry six or more people, and was becoming known as “Big-G.” Low focused on a “mini-shuttle approach wherein a smaller shuttle vehicle is first developed and launched on an expendable booster. The recoverable booster and the desired full-scale shuttle are phased in at a later date.” The mini-shuttle would have a 15 x 40 foot payload bay (so that it could carry research and application modules and eventually space station modules), upgraded Saturn J-2 engines, and a disposable hydrogen/oxygen propellant tank. It could carry 40,000 pounds (rather than 65,000 pounds) to a due-East orbit. The initial version of this mini-shuttle would make use of existing technology in its on-board electronic systems. It would be propelled to staging velocity by an expendable booster, then fire its engines to accelerate to orbital velocity. In successive stages of development, an advanced shuttle rocket engine could replace the J-2 engines and a recoverable booster, not necessarily piloted, could be used.

Low also considered a “glider approach.” This vehicle, Low suggested, would be winged but smaller, with a 12 x 40 foot payload bay, carrying 30,000 pounds to orbit. It would have small engines for maneuvering in orbit and to initiate return to Earth, but no large rocket engines. It would be propelled to orbit by an expendable booster. Low did not have “enough information in hand to lead to a firm recommendation between the glider approach and the mini-shuttle approach.” He suggested that NASA “take a further look at both the glider and the mini-shuttle before we decide to limit our work to one or the other.” Low noted that Dale Myers preferred the mini-shuttle approach, suggesting that a glider would only send astronauts “whirling about the Earth” to no evident purpose, while he, Fletcher, and von Braun favored the glider.21

By the end of October, NASA had learned of the possibility that Apollo 16 and 17 might be canceled, though it is not clear that the agency knew that the can­celation directive came directly from President Nixon. Fletcher wrote a long let­ter to Cap Weinberger on November 3, putting forth the case for not canceling the missions. He told Weinberger that “if broader considerations, nevertheless, lead to a decision to cancel Apollo 16 and 17, the consequences would be much more serious than the loss of a major scientific opportunity. Unless compen­satory actions are taken at the same time to offset and minimize the impact, this decision could be a blow from which the space program might not easily recover.” Fletcher proposed as a rationale for canceling the missions “that, in these times of pressing domestic needs, the manned space program should be earth-oriented instead of exploration and science-oriented.” Not surprisingly, he suggested as an offsetting action “an early go-ahead for the space shuttle.” Science adviser David chimed in at the end of November, urging the president to retain the mission in the NASA program, telling Nixon that “the cost of completing these missions is $118 million in FY 73, less than one-half of one per cent of the total cost of the Apollo investment. . . These missions will pro­vide over fifty per cent of the total productive time on the lunar surface” and that “further cancellation at this time would be seized upon not only by skeptics in the science and engineering communities but also by many staunch supporters of the Administration as unwarranted and unwise.” Apparently David had told his associates that he would resign if the two missions were canceled.33

During the second half of December the White House prepared for a final decision on the space shuttle configuration. On December 16 the OMB space unit prepared a memorandum for the president discussing the “capa­bilities, size, and cost of the space shuttle” as “the one key Presidential issue remaining in the NASA FY 1973 Budget.” The memorandum made the case for the OMB shuttle approach, and noted that “the difference between the employment impact of the two versions of the Shuttle on 11/72 [an indirect way of saying ‘on the Presidential election’] is negligible. Announcement of a favorable decision for either version would be gratefully received by the aerospace industry.” The memo recognized that the larger shuttle could “transport certain intelligence satellites and a relatively few large astronomy satellites,” but that “achieving the extra capability of the larger version is not of near-term importance.” It suggested that “it is important to maintain the Titan III for national security. Dropping the dependable Titan III would place too much reliance upon a new and unproven system for vital national security missions.” Approving “the lower cost Shuttle would preserve the option to build bigger versions in the 1980’s if really required. There is a high probability that this will not be the case.” The memo recommended that “policy guidance be given to NASA that (a) the total investment cost of the Shuttle (including facilities and vehicles) is not to exceed $5 billion,

(b) the recurring cost per Shuttle launch is not to exceed $6 million, and

(c) the peak NASA budget during the rest of the 1970’s is not to exceed $3.2 billion (in 1971 dollars).” These cost constraints had been modified slightly upward compared to the December 11 OMB shuttle paper. With this guidance, “NASA and its industrial contractors [should] proceed at once to begin to define the best system that can be developed within the overall fiscal constraints.”27

Don Rice forwarded the draft presidential memo to Cap Weinberger together with a cover note that revealed some of the tactics that OMB was employing in its dealings with NASA. Rice noted that “the fact that the Shuttle decision is still open is our most significant bargaining point with NASA” with respect to the agency’s future. He suggested, “as part of the decision on the Space Shuttle, an understanding be reached with Dr. Fletcher about the need for the closure of a manned space flight center after Apollo and Skylab are completed.” In order to receive approval for the shuttle, NASA would have to agree in several years to reduce its institutional base, a particular OMB objective. But no action on this closure “would be initiated or announced” until after the November presidential election. Rice closed his note to Weinberger by suggesting that “it would seem unwise to approve. . . NASA’s request for a large Space Shuttle.”28

This draft memorandum was not forwarded to Richard Nixon; the space shuttle issue was instead addressed by his senior advisers. NASA was sched­uled to meet with OMB on December 29 to make its final recommendation with respect to the shuttle. In preparation, on December 28 there was a meeting in the Indian Treaty Room of the Old Executive Office Building at which Don Rice discussed the various shuttle configurations with senior White House staff such as Ehrlichman, Shultz, Weinberger, Flanigan, and international economics counselor Peter Peterson. Bill Anders held mod­els of the different configurations as Rice spoke. Later on the same day, Ehrlichman met separately with Ed David and Peter Flanigan to discuss the shuttle decision. During one of these meetings, Ehrlichman called Anders, asking which shuttle configuration would produce the most aerospace jobs in southern California. Anders replied “you don’t need to be a rocket sci­entist to know that the bigger the shuttle, the more the jobs.” Ehrlichman replied “OK, that will be the one” which would be approved. By the end of December, when the final decision on the shuttle design was to be made, there was thus a good understanding within the senior levels of the White House of the issues at stake.29 It was clearly time for a decision.

On March 14, Don Rice gave NASA oral approval for developing the NASA-recommended shuttle configuration, an orbiter with a 15 x 60 foot payload bay and using solid rocket motors to assist in its launch. The next day, NASA issued a press release saying: "NASA announced today that the Space Shuttle booster stage will be powered by solid rocket motors in a parallel burn configuration. The booster stage will be recoverable. Requests for proposals for design and development of the Space Shuttle are expected to be issued to industry about March 17." NASA estimated shuttle development costs would be $5.15 billion and the cost per flight would be $10.5 million. A contract for shuttle development would be issued in summer 1972, with the initial orbital test flights with a crew aboard to occur in 1978. The NASA release stated "the complete Shuttle system is to be operational before 1980."7

This announcement brought down the curtain on the drama that had begun more than three years earlier. President Richard Nixon and his associates, with the decision to develop the space shuttle, had finally given an answer to the question "What do you do next, after the Moon?" That answer defined much of the U. S. civilian space pro­gram for the next 40 years. John Kennedy’s 1961 decision to go to the Moon led to the Apollo program, which lasted only from 1961 to 1975; Richard Nixon’s decision to build the U. S. post-Apollo space program around the space shuttle had a far more lasting impact.